Posts by :
- Working with housing associations and private developers;
- Source of funding in addition to Homes and Communities agency grant and housing association finance that you have been able to access to develop affordable housing;
- Arrangements for community participation in shaping the planned development;
- Examples of specialist accommodation provided within market towns that have serviced the town itself and the rural hinterland.
- 61% said unemployment had increased
- 40% said business start-ups had decreased
- 59% said number of vacant business units had increased
- 60% were confident about their town’s future and 30% were unsure or did not respond
- Maintenance and increase in funding and support from RDAs and local authorities
- Greater cooperation and responsiveness from landlords
- Reduction in business rates
- Planning protection from out-of-town shopping centres
- Improved local infrastructure including transport links
- Devolving of power and resources including reforms to local governance
- Short-term, reactive nature of proposed responses
- Focus limited to town centre and retail
- Role of public economy and not understood
- Potential of third sector not recognized
- Urban-focused and area-wide economic strategies do not engage small towns
- Action with Communities in Rural England
- Campaign to Protect Rural England
- Country Land and Business Association
- Local Government Association
- Royal Town Planning Institute
- Town and Country Planning Association
- Settle Hydro – harnessing power at Settle Weir it is estimated that the community run project will generate about 165,000 kWh (units) of electricity a year – enough for around 50 average houses – saving 80 tonnes of carbon a year or 3,200 tonnes of carbon over its expected lifetime of 40 years;
- Leominster Anaerobic Digester – a project to provide the market town with its own community owned and operated power plant producing renewable energy;
- Chippenham Environmental Initiatives – the Chippenham and Villages Environmental group are implementing a project producing thermal images of houses to raise awareness of energy efficiency and provide assistance to householders in taking action to save energy; and
- Comrie- Sustainable development of Cultybraggan Army Camp – 90 acres of land brought into community ownership in September 2007 for developing ecological building construction methods, renewable energy sources for the village and local food production.
- Increase capacity and early involvement in the planning process through the development of streamlined advice for networks operating within local communities, which offers practical support in helping them to align community planning with the statutory planning process, underpinned by a standardised and quality-assured approach.
- Increase capacity through the transfer of good practice in environmental issues and the involvement in the delivery of affordable housing, with the sharing of knowledge and related skills between 100 town partnerships.
- Extend the reach of CLP by contributing to 10 pilot interventions in strategy/ policy documents published by strategic bodies or initiatives proposed in the Communities in control: real people, real power White Paper.
housing_draft
June 29th, 2010AFFORDABLE HOUSING – POLICY INTO PRACTICE – your feedback required (scroll down..)
Affordable Housing is a key issue for market towns. AMT recently commissioned some work to explore the issues surrounding the provision of affordable homes in more detail, to form the basis of our Affordable Housing Policy into Practice Paper and feed into our Position Statement and Campaign Plan for this campaign area.
The information on affordable housing has been developed to give practitioners working within market towns an understanding of the current policy guidance as regards enabling and delivering affordable housing within market towns. It details current government policy thinking at a national level and how this thinking has been disseminated into regional and local policy to enable affordable housing within market towns.
The provision of affordable housing is important within any community. It provides high quality housing for people who are unable to access private rented accommodation or afford to buy a home of their own. Development can make important contributions to communities by: meeting the needs of local people; sustaining local amenities, services and the economy; and, supporting the social mix and networks within communities.
Affordable housing or the lack of it is a key issue in many market towns. Higher than average house prices and lower than average wages has resulted in households on lower and median incomes being unable to remain in market towns and the surrounding rural hinterlands. This is often where they were born and have family roots, some who have left the area cannot afford to return to take up work or support relatives. This situation can create challenges for individual families, the local economy and the wider sustainability of the community.
The founding principle of much government policy is the promotion of ‘sustainable’ development, with ‘sustainable’ communities an integral part of that concept. Over the last five years considerable attention has been given to the extent to which public policy has inhibited the achievement of this objective in a rural context (specifically for communities under 3,000 population or with a population 3,000 to 10,000). As a result current government policy is centered on a new ‘Place Shaping Agenda’ of which delivering housing, market and affordable, is an integral part.
The contents can be found further down this page – please have a look through as the guidance should help you understand what affordable housing is and how you can develop it in your town.
Please let us have your feedback: Email us at: Alison.Eardley@towns.org.uk
We would welcome your experiences in developing affordable housing within your market towns, in particular your experience of:
Also, in preparing this Policy into Practice paper there are a number of recommendations relevant to organisations working to improve affordable housing supply in market towns. These include national government and their regional partners, local authorities and registered social landlords and individual residents and community groups concerned about the future growth of their community.
RECOMMENDATION 1 – Assumed level of knowledge
Within the majority of guidance and advice in relation to affordable housing and the planning system, there is an assumed level of knowledge which is above the level of knowledge that perhaps practitioners working on the ground have in this policy area. There has been significant change in government’s approach to enabling housing and planning policy following most notable the Barker Review and Taylor Review.
We would ask that future guidance is created in an approach with does not discourage community members from wishing to find out more.
RECOMMENDATION 2 - Master planning
The Taylor review called for a different approach to developing affordable housing within rural communities and we would support and encourage this approach. Master planning is a process to map a strategic vision and plan for development that takes into account not just the buildings, spaces and street plans but also the social and environmental contexts of the community to provide a plan for achieving a fully shaped place.
In preparing their Sustainable Community Strategies we would ask that local and regional authorities adopt this approach for all communities where housing supply is to be targeted.
RECOMMENDATION 3 – Partnership working
Effective partnerships are not necessarily those with the responsibility to enable affordable housing (local authorities, RSLs, HCA, Regional Assembly and private developers) and need to include all sections of the community from business interests to organised community groups.
We would ask for all projects to increase or regenerated housing supply that a stakeholder analysis is undertaken that incorporates all interested parties. This in turn should inform community participation practices as regards housing development and regeneration.
RECOMMENDATION 4 – Effective community participation
The Taylor review noted ‘Enquiry by Design’, a process developed by the Princes Trust to help communities understand and shape what new and existing communities want from development. The event would be undertaken during the course of the design process bringing together relevant information about the site and sets out to harmonise this with the aims and aspirations of the community.
We would ask ‘Enquiry by Design’ becomes standard practice and seeks to involve all interested stakeholders.
RECOMMENDATION 5 – Willingness to accept change
A sustainable community is often referred to as one which is socially, economically and environmentally vibrant. In achieving a sustainable community the concept of change has to be accepted. If guidance and advice was more targeted at practitioners and community residents living or working within market towns, it would help to alleviate the barriers caused by the concept of ‘what is the hidden agenda’.
We would ask town councils and market town residents to become involved in the decisions affecting their community, not simply when a planning application goes in, but in shaping their areas when local authorities seek to involve residents.
Do you agree with the recommendations? Please email us if you have any feedback, at: Alison.Eardley@towns.org.uk
Policy into Practice Paper – CONTENTS
Part I: National Government Policy - Introduction to national government and housing and planning legislation policy
Part II: Regional Policy Context - The role of regional agencies in disseminating national government housing and planning guidance to a local level. There are three elements of regional level strategy that are particularly important as a context for housing and planning policy, Regional Spatial Strategy, Regional Economic Strategy and Regional Housing Strategy. However, change is happening and from 2010 these strategies will be integrated into a single Integrated Regional Strategy.
Part III: What is affordable housing? – Having set the national and regional policy context as regards planning and housing policy, the next section is This covers the definition of affordable housing, the main providers, who is eligible and how it is allocated. This includes the new push from government for local authorities to adopt a Choice Based Lettings approach to all tenures of affordable housing (social rented and intermediate).
Part IV: The New Place Shaping Agenda – Local Authorities have a key role to play as regards government’s new place shaping agenda. At a local level their role is to prepare a strategic vision for their area with four key mechanisms, Local Strategic Partnership, Sustainable Communities Strategy, Local Area Agreement and Local Development Framework.
Part V: Enabling affordable housing at the local level – Local authorities have a key role of facilitating the delivery of affordable housing. This chapter details policy in place to enable them to deliver the right amount of affordable housing, in the right place with required community consultation.
Part VI: Challenges to developing affordable housing in market towns – Over the past five years there have been three significant government inquiries into the current planning system, the rural economy and delivery of affordable housing in rural communities, the Barker Review of Housing Supply 2004, The Affordable Rural Housing Commission 2006 and the Taylor Review of the Rural Economy and Affordable Housing 2007. This chapter details the main findings and recommendations in each of these inquiries and then, using the case studies and evidence from the inquiries, details barriers to developing affordable housing in market towns and opportunities to overcome these barriers.
Part VII: the Credit Crunch details the effect the current economic downturn is having on the affordable housing sector. In many urban and rural areas, development work on schemes that were considered viable twelve months ago has stopped. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that developers are pulling out of schemes and off-loading land assets in an attempt to manage risk.
Part VIII: Party Politics and Affordable Housing attempts to summarise the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat policy commitments to providing housing, both market and affordable. This section has been taken from relevant pages on each Party’s website and the content is information in the public domain.
Part IX: Next Steps details Action for Market Towns recommendations to improve supply of affordable housing within market towns and future research required. With a general election looming and England hopefully emerging from a recession, we are in a period of change. We would welcome your experiences in developing affordable housing within your market towns; working with housing associations and private developers, sourcing funding in addition to Homes and Communities agency grant and housing association finance that you have been able to access to develop affordable housing, arrangements for community participation in shaping the planned development, and examples of specialist accommodation provided within market towns that have serviced the town itself and the rural hinterland.
Part X Useful Websites lists the websites from which the majority of information has been gathered for this ‘Policy into Practice paper’.
Case Studies – Four case studies have been prepared to illustrate Affordable Housing in action at the town level:
The first case study, Whitehill Borden, East Hampshire which at one time was considered as a possible overspill area for London and is a Ministry of Defence training area saw large scale development in the 1970s and 1980s. The town was recently awarded eco-town status.
The second case study, Coalville Housing Estate, Longton, North Staffordshire, is an ex-mining market town that became part of the City of Stoke on Trent. The city is one of 9 housing market renewal pathfinder areas and the whole town is undergoing extensive regeneration.
The third case study Penrith, Eden District Council, is a large market town in Eden valley where the local authority successfully developed the town centre with a mixed tenure development. They are also supporting young people to remain in the area with a Foyer development.
The fourth case study, Wells next the sea, North Norfolk District Council is a high demand housing market fuelled by tourism and the desire for second home ownership. The sub regional partnership, involving an active community partnership, has been working to improve its evidence base to support the case for increased affordable housing provision and influence district council policy.
The fifth case study is Hitchin, a market town in North Hertfordshire; the town has seen high demand for housing outstripping supply with the recession impacting on a partnership between the local authority, housing association and private developer to develop a site in the town centre with a mix of affordable and market housing.
Market Towns: Next 10 Years (paper from 2009)
March 17th, 2010Market Towns: The Next Ten Years (Updated)
Chris Wade, Chief Executive, Action for Market Towns
Download a printable version of the shorter summary document in Word (or scroll down to read).
Download the full document (members only).
Back in the autumn of 2007, whilst signs of the impending credit crunch, fuel price increases and climate change were evident to some, they were not issues that were in common parlance and the impacts had not begun to be widely felt. At that time, the analysis of issues facing small towns identified three broad sets of policy issues:
Looking Beyond the High Street
Whilst the health of the High Street was recognised as a very visible issue in small towns, it was equally understood that their economic and social well-being was dependent on wider issues such as employment, housing, education, health and transport. Similarly, whilst it was recognised that influences such as climate change and global economics would inevitably have an impact, it was understood that it was important for policy makers to be proactive in mitigating change.
Joined-up Settlements and Policies
By 2007, an understanding had emerged that strategies for regenerating individual small towns could not be developed without a better appreciation of how these towns both complement and compete with their neighbours. Equally, wider regeneration strategies and policies needed to take account of any ripple effects such as, for example, the inadvertent impacts of strong urban-focused economic development and housing strategies on smaller rural towns. One inference was that spatial theories and policy needed to be updated to provide a better understanding of different types of small towns and reflect increased mobility and a global economy.
Community Leadership and Capacity
There was a strong emphasis on the potential of a new localism expressed in modified forms of community leadership and action planning. It was considered important to capture the lessons learnt from a decade of community-led regeneration within market towns to help improve upon the existing good practice. Suggestions for increasing capacity and effectiveness included improved leadership skills, new models of local governance and techniques for achieving greater strategic influence.
The last two years have been dramatic in awakening people to the realities of what previously had seemed like scare mongering about future scenarios for small towns. First there were rapid fuel price rises that made everyone think about fuel dependency and highlighted opportunities and threats for rural livelihoods. This at a time when increasing evidence of impending climate change raised similar issues from a different perspective. Then came the global credit crunch and recession with immediate and visible impacts on the United Kingdom and small town High Streets in particular.
Ongoing Work and Responses to Changing Circumstances
AMT’s work over the last two years has continued to balance long-term research and strategic influence, with the ongoing transfer of knowledge and good practice between its members. The launch at its 2008 Convention of its £2million National Lottery-funded Towns Alive programme has provided extra resources to achieve this. In a sense, the impacts of the recession and threats of climate change demonstrate the validity of such a twin-track approach.
Knowledge Hub
As part of its work, AMT seeks to serve as a knowledge hub for transferring existing knowledge, informing policy and commissioning research. It seeks to do this through a network of Policy Advocates and a national Market Towns Policy Forum called ‘Small Towns for Tomorrow’ involving key agencies, businesses and academic institutions.
Work recently commissioned by AMT as part of this role, shows that there are 1,607 small towns or service centres in England alone. Although individually these towns might appear insignificant in national policy terms (over 80% have a population of less than 10,000), collectively they serve 11.1 million people or over one fifth of the population. Moreover, the work showed that these are some of the fastest growing settlements; with growth rates for small towns being well over twice as fast as larger towns and cities.
The figures in this work by John Shepherd emphasise a dichotomy for regional and national policy makers: How to develop strategies that respond to the individual characteristics and needs of small towns; whilst nurturing their collective potential to contribute to the wider economy and society.
Understanding Different Types of Towns
Usefully, John Shepherd’s work offers some help with this dichotomy by providing a typology of eight groups of small towns that share common social and economic characteristics. These different groupings can then be used in formulating responsive economic and social policy and comparing activity between similar towns. In this respect this work shares similarities with ongoing research by the University of Lincoln and AMT is now working with both institutions to develop a definitive approach to classifying small towns.
Developing Community-Led Planning
Community-led planning has been a widely-used technique for identifying local issues and responses within small towns but it is not delivering its wider potential. Over the last year, AMT has been working in partnership with NALC, ACRE, Carnegie UK and the Urban Forum to develop a coordinated approach to improving community-led planning techniques and widening its strategic influence. Research about to be published by AMT, supports calls for the approach to be developed so that it can provide policy-makers with usable data about the individual and collective needs of towns. AMT is managing an Empowerment Fund contract with CLG, to test how community-led planning can fit better with local authority strategic planning. Two of the first areas that AMT is seeking to test the wider application of community-led planning are in influencing rural service provision and reducing community carbon footprints.
Towns-4-Towns
Through its Towns-4-Towns good practice exchange, AMT seeks to help towns across the country to learn from each other’s experiences. This is achieved through the National Market Towns Awards; a knowledge transfer fund; a database of case studies, local network events and online forums.
Market Towns Academy
AMT is providing training and guidance on sustaining successful local regeneration initiatives through its newly launched Market Towns Academy. This provides an online diagnostic tool to help town partnerships and councils assess progress and an accredited development programme for face-to-face training and online tuition.
Prosperous Places Campaign
Prosperous Places is one of four key campaigns that AMT has been working on over the last two years. The other campaign areas where AMT is focusing its current work to improve the vitality and viability of small towns are community-led planning; rural services and housing. These campaigns draw together particular strands of AMT’s work around a key issue.
In a sense, market towns have been battling with their own ‘mini-recessions’ for a decade or more. The Prosperous Places campaign provides a focus for pulling together this existing experience; understanding the further impacts of a global recession and developing practical and policy responses.
Prosperous Places resources are accessible from the campaign section of the AMT website and include a special Policy in to Practice paper providing guidance on how towns can develop an economic development strategy and bringing together a range of tools, case studies and policy links. One of the key conclusions from this paper was about the important role that town-based action plans and economic strategies will have in informing county and unitary economic assessments from 2010.
Related policy work includes AMT’s position statement on retail and town centres which emphasises the importance of siting new supermarkets and retail parks close to existing High Street shops. AMT attended the Government’s Town Centre Summit with Ministers in April and has submitted detailed proposals that it is now discussing with officials at CLG. Through the network of Advocates, consultation is being conducted on the Government’s new Planning Policy Statement on Planning Prosperous Economies.
Through amt-i, Action for Market Towns’ research and consultancy division, small towns across the country can participate in a national benchmarking scheme to assess their economic vitality and compare year-on-year progress. amt-i also offers a series of town centre services aimed at providing additional support to help towns respond to the recession. amt-i can also draw-on AMT’s network of members to undertake strategic research on economic issues such as inward investment. amt-i is currently undertaking a detailed research programme in conjunction with CLES and the Commission for Rural Communities to assess the impacts of the recession on markets towns and identify transferable good practice in responding to it.
Resilience to the Recession
The ongoing research being conducted by AMT and CLES in to the resilience of market towns to the recession, reports the following findings based on the perceptions of AMT members:
Initial conclusions drawn from analysis of the full survey include:
Future Support Requirements:
General Conclusions:
Despite the apparent optimism in-part indicated in this research, the findings also reveal some possible shortcomings in the level of capacity, understanding and resources at the town level. Coupled with a seeming lack of focus at the strategic level on the collective economic value of small towns or differentiation between types of towns, the future vitality of the economy seems dependent on local initiative and the inherent qualities of the town environment.
The case remains that whilst examples of successful initiatives exist that can bring together the necessary mix of factors to realize a town’s potential; it is doubtful whether most market towns possess the capacity and capability to proactively influence the wider agendas.
The economies of some market towns will undoubtedly thrive because of inherent strengths including location and transport links. The inevitable long-term decline of others may, however, have been masked by relatively high levels of public and private investment in recent years. Equally, some towns may be well-placed to benefit from the expansion of the green economy by virtue of their abundant natural resources, local enterprise and accessibility; others may find themselves constrained by rising energy costs. We need now a more sophisticated understanding of the potential of different types of small towns to contribute to the wider economy and the necessary local capacity to ensure this potential is realised.
Rural Coalition
March 17th, 2010The Rural Coalition was established in September 2008 and is made up of six national organisations representing the social, economic and environmental needs of rural areas, as follows:
The group is chaired by Matthew Taylor MP and aims to develop a common vision for rural England, campaigning for reforms that will create a strong, confident and sustainable countryside.
The coalition’s prospectus ‘The future is rural too’ argues that “for 50 years or more, policy has undervalued rural England and failed to meet the needs of rural communities – and therefore of the nation. In hindsight, the result is starkly apparent. Rural communities have slowly but relentlessly become less and less sustainable and less and less self-sufficient.”
The Coalition has is currently drafting a more detailed report aimed at Government to present its shared policy agenda for rural communities, building on the recommendations in Matthew Taylor MP’s 2008 report to government.
Prompted by discussions with the Commission for Rural Communities, AMT has now been given an opportunity to influence the work of the Rural Coalition, including the chance to draft a possible market towns contribution to their report. Following a meetnig with Matthew Taylor MP, AMT has contributed to the report and finalised its own overarching policy statement on Market Towns to add to the debate.
View AMT’s document, ‘A Market Town Renaissance: The Next Ten Years – Supporting self-reliance in communities’
Empowerment Fund – Year 1
March 17th, 2010Year 1 of the Empowerment Fund ends on 31 March 2010. The key achievements are as follows:
Coordination of national community led planning development best practice advice
Aim – Work with ACRE, NALC, Carnegie, Urban Forum and other key partners to develop best practice advice on a coordinated and integrated national approach to Community Led Planning (CLP).
Achievements: The key partners with a role in CLP met to map out potential next steps in taking forward a joint approach to increase use of CLP in empowering communities. The following roles were agreed where taking an agreed approach was considered useful:
- Advocacy role – including promotion of CLP at parish level and via Rural Community Councils; testing CLP in urban areas; good practice guidance; national-led advocacy to government, regional agencies, and local providers.
- Technical improvements – including review and refinement of Parish and Towns methodologies; compatibility of techniques across rural, market towns and urban areas.
- Support and sharing of good practice – including the need for a co-ordinated approach to presenting CLP to t he end user, including a shared bank of case studies and shared training resources.
AMT and ACRE have agreed a joint approach to promoting their respective CLP methodologies under a framework called LEAD, which illustrates a sequence of activities that community groups are expected to undertake when producing any Community Led Plan. The four steps refer to generic stages involved in both the Parish Planning and Town Action Planning methodologies and the two organisations will promote this withing their documentation.
AMT has developed a best practice ‘Policy into Practice’ paper on CLP, which is aimed at community groups and towns/ parish councils. The paper has been endorsed by ACRE and has undergone consultation with both AMT members and ACRE’s Rural Community Council Network.
Following the discussions among all key stakeholders (as noted above) a separate project (funded via the National Empowerment Partnership) has emerged. This aims to explore how CLP might be developed for use in urban areas. The work that has taken place undert he Empowerment Fund, for example the LEAD framework, will feed directly into this work.
2. Revised Market Town Healthcheck
Aim: Develop a revised Market Town Healthcheck which takes forward the work of the previous Healthcheck. It will encourage users of the scheme to understand their town better, by undertaking surveys and observing activity in the town.
Acheivements: The new Town Action Planning (TAP) is intended to be an updated version of the former Market Towns Healthcheck. There is greater emphasis on the simplification of the CLP process and on enabling greater and more accurate data at town level upon which to base plans.
The TAP takes account of the new LEAD framework, and having been piloted in a number of areas in the southeast, is to be launched before the end of the financial year.
There may be opportunity in Yr2 to discuss how it might be promoted as best practice guidance by CLG, or within the plan-making manual.
3. Alignment with the statutory planning process
Aim: Asses how top-down local authorities approach to planning can effectively meet community-led bottom-up approach. Seek to benchmark different authority’s approaches against other areas of the country and facilitate an exchange of good practice and lessons learnt from the local authorities’ perspectives. Building on an early study with Carnegie UK in Yorkshire, AMT would be equally interested in assessing how to maximise the towns’ strategic influence.
Achievements: AMT has been working with Northumberland County Council and Durham County Council to assist hem in the developmentof an effective framework for CLP. The aim of the process is to enable local authorities to work in partnership with the voluntary and community sector, encouraging them to identify their priorities through CLP and, where appropriate, acknowledging and addressing those priorities through strategic planning processes.
Recommendations are likely to include technical considerations about the process including common data packs and structuring of reports to align with LAA themes, for example. However the key issue that is emerging is need to understand the requirements of different local authority departments and to develop a receptive and empowering culture across an authority.
The work will continue into Yr2 and a dissemination event planned for May 2010 could raise awareness of the issues and finding and these might also be included in the proposed Small Towns for Tomorrow Think Tank symposium planned for July.
4. Towns-4-Towns
Aim- To build on AMT’s current Towns-4-Towns element of the Towns Alive Programme by seeking examples of good practice in environmental issues, as well as the planning for and delivery of affordable housing.
Achievements: Empowerment Fund budget has been used to commission four good practice case studies in environmental issues, with the aim of broadening the scope of the CLP process to ensure that it is better able to address environmental issues. These are:
This work will directly benefit AMT’s members as it provides examples of work that has successfully been carried out and resources to assist in new projects. The work will be developed in Year 2 of the Empowerment Fund, with links being made with the Centre for Sustainable Energy to embed good environmental practice into the TAP CLP methodology.
Four case studies focussing on affordable housing in market towns have also been developed in line with the Policy into Practice Paper for Affordable Housing and these will be published shortly.
5. Policy into Practice Paper on Affordable Housing
Aim: Develop a Policy into Practice Paper on ‘affordable housing’.
Achievements: The paper has been drafted has been drafted and is currently in consultation with AMT members. The document will inform the development of a Policy Position Paper for AMT and associated Campaign Plan.
6. Knowledge Hub
Aim: To develop the webpages, the market town advocates programme and the think tank – Small Towns for Tomorrow.
Achievements: The webpages continue to be added to. A market town Advocates Programme has been established and 15 have been ‘recruited’ so far to input into internal AMT policy development and external consultations. The Policy Forum, Small Towns for Tomorrow, has been established and three meetings have been held. A formal link with the Rural Evidence Research Centre has been established which can act as the research capacity for the group. The launch will take place in July as a policy symposium focussing on the future of small towns including raising their visibility in government policy.
Click here to find out what is planned for Year 2
The Empowerment Fund
March 17th, 2010** Click here to find out how you can get involved in our Empowerment Fund projects **
In 2009 AMT received Empowerment Funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government. There are a number of key needs that we believe need to be addressed to increase AMT’s capacity, capability and reach to support the further advancement of community-led planning.
AMT has identified these needs by consulting widely with partnerships across England via its regional networks and through initiating a review of community-led planning approaches with key partners including Carnegie UK, ACRE, NALC and the Urban Forum.
In particular, we will be using the funding to:
Click here to find out more about what we achieved through the Empowerment Fund in Year 1.
Click here to find out how you can get involved in Year 2 work.
Empowerment Fund Projects – Get involved..
March 17th, 2010Year 2 of the Empowerment Fund is set to begin on 1 April 2010. AMT is involved in a series of projects and would be keen to hear from anyone who would like more information on how to get involved. The projects are as below:
1. Co-ordination of national Community Led Planning development best practice advice
Aim: Working in partnership with ACRE, the aim is to develop guidance aimed at local aurhorities explaining how they can mae the most of Community Led Planning.
Summary: The value of the proposed project lies in its capacity to tap into the experience and expertise of a range of different stakeholders to examine how CLP can be better used by local authorities.
The project will provide an invaluable opportunity for everyone involved to learn from each other to find out what works and what does not, with respect to supporting community groups to develop high quality plans and making use of data produced within statutory planning processes.
- Local authorities to have a much better understanding of CLP, and able to draw upon examples of best practice to make better use of it themselves
- Local communities benefit from much more tailored support from their local authorities, giving them the additional confidence and resources to produce high quality plans that have the capacity to feed into broader structures of local decision making
- The two CLP methodologies – Parish Planning and Town Action Planning – are better aligned, drawing on a common framework of support and guidance
- CLP has a stronger national profile, recognised and supported by local, regional and national stakeholders for its capacity to strengthen existing democratic processes.
Get involved: If you would be interested in finding out more about this project, including how to get involved, please contact us
2. Town Action Planning
Aim: To promote the new, updated version of the Market Town Healthcheck
Summary: The work on updating the Market Towns Healthcheck is virtually complete and Town Action Planning is the result. It will now be promoted to market town partnerships and local councils for use. The aim will be to disseminate the work, and update with further work being developed as part of the Empowerment Fund programme, for example on environmental awareness.
Town Action Planning will be promoted via both AMT and ACRE under the LEAD framework and will be further developed to incorporate eg. Environmental guidance and public participation guidance.
Get Involved: If you would like to find out more about Town Action Planning, or are interested in using it to both understand your town and develop a strategy, then please contact us.
3. Alignment of CLP with the statutory planning process
Aim: AMT will seek to widen the acceptance and use of CLP by the public sector in different circumstances through engagement with the LGA, IDeA, TCPA, RTPI as part of the Rural Coalition and joint work with the Urban Forum, Community Matters and National Empowerment Partnership on the application of CLP in urban areas.
Summary: This will build on earlier work in Northumberland and Durham to test these findings and their wider application in other parts of the country or circumstances such as areas facing rapid growth and development. As well as the delivery of successful action learning outcomes, the work will seek to define widely applicable approaches for the involvement and use of CLP to align with the strategic needs of local authorities The findings will be used to prepare extra guidance within the Town Action Planning Framework about achieving strategic influence.
Get Involved: Would your local authority like to test out some of the findings from the work that has been taking place in Northumberland and Durham? Or are you interested in testing the application of CLP in aligning with statutory planning in your authority? Please get in touch if you want to find out more.
4. Models of Local Leadership
Aim: To develop an AMT Policy Snapshot document on local leadership within market towns, comprising a series of case studies.
Summary: Many of our members have raised queries about local leadership and governance structures in relation to how it plays out in practice against a background of budget cuts, greater community involvement, and the need to reduce inequality. The work will explore, with a number of communities, current and potential governance structures exploring their effectiveness and the direction of policy and guidance.
Get involved: We’d really like to hear from you if you are interested in telling us your experience of local leadership structures – have you had issues around accountability? Is your local partnership facing threat to funds and looking for new ways to sustain itself? Are you looking to work more closely with other organisations or authorities? Email us to find out more.
5. CLP and the Environment
Aim: AMT will be working with the Centre for Sustainable Energy and others on the development of a resource aimed at community groups to assist them in developing environmental projects within their Community Plans.
Summary: CSE has already been working with ACRE on this project as part of their Yr 1 Empowerment Fund, in particular exploring how the guidance might be developed for rural parishes. The work with AMT will extend this to include a market town focus, raising awareness of the distinct issues that larger communities bring, and incorporating this in the Town Action Planning methodology. In addition to this aim, AMT has been in discussion with CSE, the Urban Forum, ACRE and Community Matters in terms of exploring further work regarding the joint approach to community led planning resources.
Get Involved: We are already catagloguing some new case studies of towns who have looked at incorporating environmental practices into their Community Led Plans, and will be releasing these shortly. If you are interested in reducing the carbon footprint of your town, then please get in touch with us.
6. Development of a Public Participation Best Practice Code
Aim: Contribute to the Environmental Law Foundation’s (ELF) work on producing a best practice guide for public participation.
Summary: ELF is aiming to produce a best practice guide for public participation, in conjunction with a number of partner organisations. AMT’s involvement in this would be primarily identifying a number of market town partnerships which can act as pilots for the project.
Get Involved: What are the major planning issues facing your town right now? Do you want to find ways to improve the way the planning system works with your community? If so, you may be able to help with this project. Please contact us for more information.
